Riverpod — Testing

Instructions

Riverpod is designed for testability: isolate state per test, mock via overrides, and keep the test environment close to production.

Unit tests (no Flutter)

Use ProviderContainer.test() to create a container for the test. Do not share containers between tests.

void main() {
  test('Some description', () {
    final container = ProviderContainer.test();
    expect(container.read(provider), equals('some value'));
  });
}

• container.read(provider) — Read current value.
• container.listen(provider, (prev, next) {}) — Listen and get a subscription; use subscription.read() to read. Prefer listen when the provider is auto-dispose so it is not disposed mid-test.

final subscription = container.listen<String>(provider, (_, _) {});
expect(subscription.read(), 'Some value');

Widget tests

Wrap the widget under test in ProviderScope:

testWidgets('Some description', (tester) async {
  await tester.pumpWidget(
    const ProviderScope(child: YourWidgetYouWantToTest()),
  );
});

To interact with providers in the test, get the container with tester.container():

final container = tester.container();
expect(container.read(provider), 'some value');

Mocking providers

Use overrides on ProviderContainer or ProviderScope. All providers can be overridden without extra setup.

final container = ProviderContainer.test(
  overrides: [
    exampleProvider.overrideWith((ref) => 'Hello from tests'),
  ],
);

// Or in widget tests:
await tester.pumpWidget(
  ProviderScope(
    overrides: [exampleProvider.overrideWith((ref) => 'Hello from tests')],
    child: const YourWidgetYouWantToTest(),
  ),
);

See riverpod-overrides for family overrides and other override methods.

Awaiting async providers

Read provider.future to get a Future that completes with the provider value; use with expectLater:

await expectLater(
  container.read(provider.future),
  completion('some value'),
);

Listening / spying

Use container.listen(provider, callback) and assert on the callback arguments or collect values in a list for assertions. Works with mockito/mocktail verify patterns.

Mocking Notifiers

Prefer mocking a dependency (e.g. repository) the Notifier uses rather than mocking the Notifier. If you must mock a Notifier, subclass it (do not implement), so the mock extends the original base class. With code generation, the mock usually needs to live in the same file as the Notifier to access the generated base class.

See riverpod-overrides and the official docs for more examples.